In TN, 8000 noon meal centres in government schools to be shut down
Posted on: 25/Dec/2018 10:23:17 AM
The present generation youngsters might not have known about the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr. K. Kamaraj who was sensational. It was Mr. Kamaraj who was responsible for the nutritious meal programme that aimed in bringing the children students to the government schools in TN. This programme was started in the 1960s and was later extended to all children till class ten by Dr. M.G. Ramachandran is known. With the support from the centre, this noon meal programme became highly popular and more than 50 lakhs of students get benefit under this superb scheme.
The latest news is the state government has ordered closure of noon meal centres having less than 25 students. This is due to the state government re-positioning the existing staff strength. It is said that the food supply to the students would not get affected by this. It was pointed out by the employees of the noon meal centres that 8000 centres in TN had fewer than 25 students each and the move to close the centres would have great impact on the government school enrolment. This noon meal programme is present in as many as 43,200 centres in the state of TN. With increase in the student strength, the staff strength of each noon meal centre having a head cook plus an assistant and an organiser increases is known fact. Each employee at these non meal centres gets a salary of Rs 5000 to Rs 7000 and out of these the centre pays amount of Rs 1000 and state pays the remaining amount.
The drop in the government school enrolment has raised high concerns and more than 1000 schools have less than 10 children now. It is now brought out that due to this drop the state government has decided to re-position employees to the centres having huge demand. The point is the officials have been asked to close down the noon meal centres in the low enrolment schools and transport food from the nearby centres to the kids in these schools.
R. Noorjahan, TN noon meal workers association secretary, expressed her thoughts about the closure of these noon meal centres in the government schools in TN. She spoke about how transporting food from the nearby centres would delay the distribution. She then threw light on the 10,000 cooking assistant posts that were vacant and then spoke about how transporting food from nearby centres to the kids would weaken the nutritious meal programme even more. Finally she highlighted that when the government was willing to pay over Rs 1 lakh for the teachers in the low-enrolment schools then there should not be any problem to pay Rs5000 for the cooks.
V. Amuthavalli, social welfare commissioner, reminded that the order was originally passed in the year 1992 and is being implemented now. The main objective was to rationalise the workforce. She later spoke about how it involved several steps and confirmed that the centres would not be shut down straightaway. According to the experts, student enrolment would be affected and it would lead to closure of the schools.
